What should I pay attention to when taking outdoor portraits?

When you have a SLR, I'm sure you'll want to take it out and take more pictures. Among them, portrait shooting is very popular with everyone, especially when a group of photographers come to shoot beautiful models, which is called happiness.

There are many such outdoor shooting activities now, whether it is major IT portals or video websites or forums, outdoor shooting activities are often conducted. So we have many opportunities to go out for outdoor portrait shooting. When taking part in outdoor shooting activities, we'd better bring a large aperture fixed-focus lens to ensure better blur effect. A portrait with a focal length of 85mm- 135mm is better with a standard lens. Generally, a lens with a focal length of 100mm is suitable for taking portraits with shoulders, and a lens with a focal length of 135mm or more can take close-ups of portraits.

Shooting beautiful models

When shooting a model outdoors, you should not only adjust your equipment to the best condition, but also pay more attention to the light when shooting, because outdoor portrait shooting is conducive to shooting more clearly, but it is easy to cause shadows on the model's face when considering the backlight and too strong light. In addition, the camera should keep the ISO low to ensure better image quality. Here are some points that should be paid attention to when shooting outdoor portraits.

Please put your mirror on the model's face.

Photography is an art of light and shadow, so we should pay more attention to the change of light when shooting models. In order to better show the model's face and figure, we need to consider the lighting position. Generally, side light and side backlight are better. Because when the sun shines directly, the light quality is too hard, which will make the model's face show a nasty shadow.

Find the light position

The best lighting time for outdoor portrait shooting is before 10 am and after 3 pm. At this time, the light is not too strong, and the side light is suitable for portrait shooting. In addition, cloudy days are also very good weather for taking portraits.

With the reflector, the model can shoot well even in strong light.

So what should we do when the sun is too strong? At this time, we can bring a reflector. We know that strong light can easily lead to a heavy shadow on the model's face. At this time, the reflector can play an important role and can supplement the light on the model's face.

Be careful not to turn the model into a bad face by taking photos against the light.

In addition, when shooting outdoors, you need to pay attention to the backlight environment. Because in the backlight environment, it is easy for us to make the model's face a big black face, so how can we avoid this situation?

"Big black face" is easy to appear in backlight environment.

Make good use of external flash

Make good use of your external flash.

In fact, if you don't plan to shoot the silhouette effect, you must be careful to shoot in the backlight environment when shooting outdoors. In addition to using a reflector, we can also bring our own external flash, and then adjust the transmittance of the flash according to the light.

Ensure the correct exposure and make good use of the spot metering of the camera. Correct exposure is the most important thing when shooting portraits, and it is also the most important thing in photography. Therefore, in order to better ensure the correct exposure when shooting portraits, we can try to use spot metering. Although there is a certain difficulty coefficient, you will find it very convenient if you master it.

Spot metering with a camera

For many portrait photographers, it is a common shooting skill to measure the skin by using the spot metering of the camera and then focus on the eyes. So we can try this method more often when taking portraits.

When using spot metering, we can choose to spot metering on the model's face, and then press the exposure lock button on the camera to ensure the correct exposure, and then focus and compose.

Is the photo too bright or too dark? Remember to add/subtract exposure compensation.

When you use a large aperture portrait lens, it is often easy to make the overall portrait too bright or too dark after using a large aperture. At this time, it is necessary to pay more attention to exposure compensation.

In addition, when you use other metering methods instead of spot metering, you also need to use exposure compensation. Especially when the model is wearing white clothes and the white in the photo is not white enough or gray enough, it is necessary to increase the exposure compensation. Because the camera often measures light with the center as the main body when it changes speed automatically, the white main body will make the camera mistakenly think that the environment is bright, resulting in underexposure.

Of course, under normal circumstances, the built-in metering system of SLR cameras can accurately measure the shooting theme, but in some cases, it is necessary to avoid false measurement, such as wearing all-black and all-white clothing in a large area, and at this time, positive and negative exposure compensation can be implemented, so exposure compensation is still very important when portrait shooting.

Conclusion: Although outdoor portrait photography is a very interesting thing, we should pay more attention to light and camera operation. Only in this way can the model be more beautiful and charming. The above tips are believed to be helpful for you to take outdoor portraits.